Today was the 4th round of the Cheap Car Challenge.
We tried Hankook RS4 tyres after noticing that a lot of the field were using them.
Qualifying started well - on the second lap Petey pulled a 63.7 second lap which put us 7th.
Then the times dropped away and the 63.7 couldn't be matched regardless of what we did with pressures (although there were plenty of decent laps in there). Lots of understeer. As other cars went faster, we dropped to 13th for the start of the race.
The race started well, with Paulie picking up two places in the first lap and running strongly, but then fading back to 13th again as the stint went on.
Hmmmm....
The rest of the morning was pretty much a disaster. The car was an understeering pig. With care, you could still put in respectably fast laps, but the slightest hiccup would kill the lap time.
El Wifeo spun coming down off the hill, while she was letting a faster car past.
Petey spun in the same spot by finding 2nd gear when he was aiming for 4th.
A silver Pulsar was driving hyper-aggressively despite being one of the slowest cars on the track. I made contact with them after they swerved across to track to block my passing move, and nearly spun them. Then they kept doing the same BS for the rest of the lap until I overtook them!
Don’t know when this photo was taken relative to the incident - possibly even different drivers in both cars.
Then a tyre valve got stuck open when dropping the pressures and we ended up with 24psi in the LHF instead of the 32psi we wanted.
Anyhow, we dropped six laps before lunch, and generally felt despondent. Still in 13th place, despite a couple of faster cars DNFing. Best race lap was a high 63, but the times were all over the joint and most were in the high 64s.
A few deep breaths at lunch, and we refitted the old faithful 2018 model Federals. Seems that the Hankooks have a very narrow happy range of temperatures and then they go off. The poor old Federals must have already done 450 laps, and are as tired as you might imagine... and now they have another 100.
Boom! Back on pace. El Wifeo picked up three places in the first stint, and set the day's PB at 63.63. We worked our way up to 8th place on the track, running at a good pace - including overtaking the leading #10 car, and chasing down a lot of the front runners.
Petey bettered the car's best ever time with a 63.10, and I
just beat the wife with a 63.59.
We ended up 7th after penalties, which was far more than we'd have dared to hope for a couple of hours earlier.
Here's where it gets interesting...
Car #10 did the most laps and would have won if they hadn't accumulated penalties. We were the only car to not drop a lap to them in the afternoon - AND we had actually taken a lap off them until I let them pass very late in the final stint.
In other words, if there was a prize for just the afternoon, we would have finished in second place, possibly even won.
